We can rear stately and beautiful dwellings
(though we seldom do), but they do not seem proper to the life of man, in
the same way that his shell is proper to the lobster; nor, indeed, is the
mansion of the nobleman proper to him, in the same kind and degree, that
a hut is proper to a peasant.
From Portland Place we passed into Regent Street, and soon reached home.
September 10th.--Yesterday forenoon we walked out with the children,
intending for Charing Cross; but, missing our way, as usual, we went down
a rather wide and stately street, and saw before us an old brick edifice
with a pretty extensive front, over which rose a clock-tower,--the whole
dingy, and looking both gloomy and mean. There was an arched entrance
beneath the clock-tower, at which two Guardsmen, in their bear-skin caps,
were stationed as sentinels; and from this circumstance, and our having
some guess at the locality, we concluded the old brick building to be St.
James's Palace. Otherwise we might have taken it for a prison, or for a
hospital, which, in truth, it was at first intended for. But, certainly,
there are many paupers in England who live in edifices of far more
architectural pretension externally than this principal palace of the
English sovereigns.
Seeing other people go through the archway, we also went, meeting no
impediment from the sentinels, and found ourselves in a large paved
court, in the centre of which a banner was stuck down, with a few
soldiers standing near it.
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